Keeping Blogs Alive: How to Do It?

by Mallary Tenore Tarpley

I moderated a live Poynter chat last week with New York University professor and PressThink blogger Jay Rosen about how to teach blogging and how to have a successful blog. There are a lot of valuable lessons in the chat, which you can replay here. We had so many questions from participants that we’re hosting a second live chat with Jay on Thursday at 1 p.m. EDT.

Speaking of blogging, I read an interesting New York Times story today about what happens when the thrill of blogging dies. I always wanted to write a story about this, but alas the Times beat me to it. It would still make for an interesting story, though, to take a look at the blogs in your local community and see which ones are defunct and which ones are thriving. I’m amazed by how alive and thriving some local Tampa Bay neighborhood blogs are.

Even still, I’m sure there are plenty that are defunct. The Times reported that, “According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.”

Tear. I make it a point to blog at least a few times a week. I like to think that I have regular readers, small as my audience might be, so in many ways I feel as though I’d be letting my readers down if I were to just let my blog die. On a more personal level, blogging gives me an outlet for communicating with others in a public forum, a chance to share my stories and experiences, and a way to stay in the habit of writing on a regular basis.

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2 Comments to “Keeping Blogs Alive: How to Do It?”

I read that article this morning and thought how well it would have gone with another one about what happens to the audience when a blogger goes off the grid. I’ve seen a couple examples where readers have been understanding, yet upset. They do miss reading stuff they’ve been so accustomed to!

That is so true! That would make for a great follow-up story. … It’s pretty easy to lose readers quickly if you stop updating your blog. The trick is to train them to come back regularly, to make it part of their daily or weekly routine.

Reading a blog you like only to find out that the person behind it has stopped updating it is similar to when you find a product you really like, and you buy it for years, and then all of a sudden it gets discontinued. You don’t want your blog to all of a sudden just be gone!